Monday, September 17, 2012
Hyman Kaplan and Education
The whole time I was reading Hyman Kaplan, I was repeatedly impressed by how Mr. Kaplan responded to the various questions that he was asked by Mr. Parkhill. For example, he was asked to define the word 'vast' and he interpreted this as the direction 'west' on the cardinal rose. Mr. Parkhill himself had an exemplary response to this interesting student by curtailing the curriculum to fit the needs of his student, a quality of flexibility that fewer and fewer teachers seem to possess in this day and age. As English majors, whether or not you have aspirations towards becoming an educator, do Mr. Parkhills' techniques necessary in today's world or simply old fashioned.
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I think some of the techniques Mr. Parkhill has an educator are pretty good such as the time he provides at the beginning of class for questions, that way the students may make connections with the class and the real world. Also assigning words to the students and then they come up with sentences for each is a good method of learning vocabulary. But there are also some techniques that are kind of old fashioned because, as a teacher, I'm not sure if I would let other students correct the each other so much without me saying a word. And I would not tell a student that they completely wrong about a certain word. For example, when Mr. Kaplan came up with the word magnificent and all the students were astonished he knew this word, yet Mr. Parkhill still said this was not the appropriate word. I believe some things can definitely be done in a classroom today, but others are now outdated.
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